I’m Creating A Platform For Platforms Of Platforms

I hear the word “platform” in over 50% of the short pitches I get. A friend of mine who is working on a new startup that isn’t even funded yet (and he’s grinding on the financing) described his goal of “creating a platform for a-phrase-that-only-73-early-adopters-will-userstand.) Entrepreneurs everywhere describe the first release of their MVP (“minimum viable product” – for those of you that haven’t intersected with the Lean Startup movement) app as a “platform”. The first three pages of a google search on “platform” are 33% tech, 33% politics, and 34% other. At least Google image search is more accurate, for example:

Ahem – give me a fucking break. Yup – I get it – it’s great to be a platform. I give you Facebook and Twitter as examples. But real platforms are few and far between. And creating “a platform” is not necessarily the right first move for your brand new consumer facing application. Why don’t you start by being super useful to a bunch of consumers first.

I know I’ve been overusing the word “platform” lately – it’s like a weird brain infection that is hard to diagnose and then eliminate. I’ve found it – now it’s time to remove it from my vocabulary.

I think it’s natural that if meeting entrepreneurs is your job, you must see the same thing, not talking about an idea, but a presentation, over and over again, you just have to be patient I suppose and let them carry on.

Anonymous

Platform beds are generally used by one or two people (three if you’re freaky and lucky.) So if you make a platform bed you don’t need to be useful for a lot of people. Put that it your pipe and smoke it.

Good point and thank you for the reminder. (time to adjust the pitch)
Perhaps for some (and me), platform is an easy way to describe a place where a certain segment of users comes to find product/service they desire. However, that’s not really what platform is, is it.
Point taken.

Platform is another of these words that comes around again. I spent far too much time in network management software product requirement meetings with people who would rather debate whether they were building a ‘platform’ or a ‘framework’ than make actual forward progress.

Anonymous

I can’t speak for the people you have seen pitching, but I think a lot of this is based on what we continually hear from VCs – the market has to be enormous. Most consumer web ideas aren’t platforms but in order to sell it to a venture capitalist it has to have that potential. An app or a niche service just doesn’t seem to fit the model. But that certainly doesn’t give license to overuse the word.

Yeah, I’m sure the corresponding VC-speak doesn’t help the situation.
At the very earliest stages, however, this is mostly an excuse from a
VC to say “I’m not interested.”

Jal

A-Fucking-men.

There are a handful companies that have started out with a stated goal of building a platform, did it, and are still around. Microsoft, Apple and Oracle are some of them. The other platforms we have didn’t start with that goal. They built products people needed, or at least liked, and became platforms.

Pikers looking for cash, on the other hand, like to talk about building platforms.

I tell people all the time that products need to have standalone value before becoming worthwhile as a platform. Building a developer ecosystem is useless unless people want the product to solve a problem on its own.

The iPhone is a great example of this. It solved a basic problem before becoming a huge hit as a platform. Now the surrounding developer ecosystem plays a large role in selling the core platform.

What I really think this relates to is drag. Big platforms drag usage of peripheral products, but they usually don’t have enough critical mass early on to drag enough meaningful usage.

I agree 100%. I’ve been thinking this year about how businesses twist themselves into pretzels to look good for VCs, instead of just building businesses the old fashioned way – by attracting customers. Unfortunately, the former approach seems to reap great rewards for founders when there’s percieved value but no intrinsic value Selling paper still seems to be more lucrative than building real businesses. Until that changes, and we reward authentic value, you’ll continue to hear those pitches.

Can’t really blame the entrepreneurs since most of them starting a startup are thinking about “changing the world.” Creating a platform will help them. Also the fact that Google founders and Facebook founder keep using that word in public can serve as an inspiration as well. Just my 2 cents. Really enjoyed “Do More Faster.” Will be a regular on your blog.

Maig1984

Good point. A great “platform” to commence change and adaptation in my pitches. 🙂

Anonymous

I think the platform you posted the picture of is probably the most engaging one. Someone should do a startup that creates a platform for playing with Lego platforms on the Facebook platform. That would be sweet.

Couldn’t agree more – you can’t just build it an they will come. You have to build the platform and the app first, get critical mass, then leverage the platform out in a very strategic way first by building other apps yourself then letting the community extend for you. Reminds me of a long piece i wrote about this: